Performance evaluation of motorized maize sheller

Abstract

Maize is the major food crop, with highest yield and production in Ethiopia. At the same time, postharvest losses in maize production are very high. Maize shelling is one of the main stages of postharvest loss in maize production. The traditional method of maize shelling is tedious, time consuming and less productive. Hence, this research project focuses on modifying and evaluating the Bako maize sheller for better performance. In doing so, evaluation site and participant farmers were selected, and the performance tests were conducted according to FAO standard test procedures. The experiments were conducted with two commonly grown varieties of maize, BH661 and LIMU (P3812W), at two different moisture contents each. In addition, farmers’ opinion about the evaluated sheller and the traditional method of shelling was assessed. The results show that the capacity of the modified sheller improved by 29% without compromising any other performance parameter of the original design. Moreover, higher shelling capacity has been recorded at lower moisture content for both maize varieties. As the moisture content decreased by 2.7% for BH661 and 3.5% for Limu, the shelling capacity increased by 326.2 kg/h and 543.333 kg/h, respectively. There is no significant variation in shelling efficiency, grain damage and cleaning efficiency for both varieties among treatments. Scattering losses are increased significantly as the moisture content of the maize kernel decreased.